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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

Remember letters? Those things that people wrote to one another in cursive handwriting with a pencil or a pen on a sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper? In those days we wrote letters to girlfriends and boyfriends, to Pen Pals we met at summer camp, or back home to Mom and Dad after we left home for college or military service. In my youthful years a postage stamp only cost about 3-5 cents and it took the postal service about a week to get a letter to any destination in the U. S. It took about three weeks to get a letter to Vietnam. I remember that because I waited anxiously for every letter I received from back home and I always checked the postal stamp to see when it was mailed. Nothing was more exciting in those days than to receive a big, fat, hand-addressed and handwritten letter in the mailbox. Modern day e-mails and text messages simply do not compare.
Sometime in the early-mid 1980s, I started a newsletter to many of my family and friends which I entitled The Albritton Letter. I typed each letter on a portable manual typewriter, purchased about 50-100 copies at the school supply store, and mailed them in stamped, handwritten envelopes. It was a labor of love. I did not get responses from everyone on my mailing list, but I did get responses from many and I loved getting those response letters.
In the 1990s, when I discovered this incredible thing called “the Internet,” I developed my own website and called it The Albritton Letters. I marketed my new electronic newsletter to my family and friends primarily by means of an electronic mailing list called “email.” It was just a hobby. Though I heard rumors that a person could make some money by selling stuff over the Internet, I never figured out how to make a single dime. It was all nothing but fun and learning for me. As my reader list expanded through referrals and self-advertising to fax machine numbers and email lists, I reached a readership of almost 10,000 at one point. I thought that was a lot of people, though it paled in comparison to the millions of Internet users accessible to professional marketers today. This was also before the advent of high-speed Internet lines, wireless communications and Instant Messaging. The whole apparatus, called “dial-up,” traveled over the telephone lines at the speed of a snail. Nevertheless, at that time it was a wondrous undertaking, a modern-day miracle, if you will.
During this period I also published a column in The Atmore Advance, as well as several other small town newspapers and regional magazines where I lived from time to time. Some of you may remember my old newspaper columns from those days. I am quite certain I have paper copies in old file folders stuffed into old file cabinet drawers around here somewhere.
With the advancement of new media technologies in both audio and video podcasting I have enjoyed experimenting with updated versions of my old Albritton Letters project via my Lloyd and Friends, Interesting Conversations With Interesting People YouTube podcast and radio program in recent years. Some of you may also follow my Lloyd’s Commentaries podcast on YouTube.
In all my Internet endeavors over the years I have always been assisted by my brother, Phillip, who was labeled from his earliest childhood years as “The Smart One” of the Bud and Ossie Lee Albritton family. Phillip is the artist of the family, you see. He sees things that others do not see. Phillip is also smart in technical things and he was engaged in this Internet thing way before I ever heard of it. Were it not for Phillip, I never could have understood all the technology developments that have occurred during my lifetime that have allowed me to more fully enjoy and develop my own love of writing, storytelling and editorializing.
Consequently, it was my brother, Phillip, who recently proposed that we launch an all-new podcast version of The Albritton Letters, one that can be easily discovered and accessed by, not only our family and friends, but also by a myriad of internet users around the globe who share our interest in commonplace, non-controversial topics like, for example, letter writing, the benefits of pet ownership, the reason for fashions and fads, the emotional value of living near other family members, etc. The fact is, the conversations Phillip and I engage in on the new Albritton Letters podcast are the same conversations that play out between family members and friends in cars and living rooms and back porch patios all over the world every single day. They are the letters in your mailbox, which will get you to thinking and talking about the sweet, everyday things of life. We invite each of you to join our conversations, uhh, excuse me… “Letters,” and post your comments.
Here’s how you find us: On your Smartphone or computer, download your favorite FREE podcast application, i.e., Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Pandora, etc. or enter the specific app address into your browser, i.e., www.spotifyt.com, click on the little magnifying glass (Search) at the top of the page, type in thealbrittonletters, choose from the topics listed, and start listening away on your bluetooth car radio via the car radio speaker, your telephone speaker, or on your earphones. You may also access our Website directly at https://thealbrittonletters.libsyn.com. This will get you to the audio podcast. If you prefer the video version, simply click on the video link provided.
Why not give The Albritton Letters a try? Who knows, maybe you’ll get hooked. And maybe, just maybe, you will sit down with a pen and paper and write me a letter and mail it to me in a #10 envelope to Lloyd Albritton, 1114 Sneed Dr., Atmore, AL 36502. Oh, how wonderful that would be!